“Nevertheless,” said Stark, “show me these hidden ways.”
Balin showed him. There was a place in the Wall itself where a slab of stone swung open into a dark tunnel. There was another place where a paving block, hidden in a narrow mews, tilted open to show a rusted ladder of iron pegs going down into what Balin said was the system of ancient drains that carried the spring floods under Kushat.
“Very good,” said Stark. “But we may be driven back out of the Quarter. Supposing that I am running for my life somewhere between here and the King City. Where would I go?”
“In that case,” said Balin, “your best way would be by the Quarter of the Tomb-Robbers. That is only our name for it, of course—the artisans call it the Quarter of the Blessed. It is a burying ground.” He led Stark up onto a rooftop and pointed out the way as well as he could, and then described in detail how to find the entrance to the hidden rat-runs that pierced the many levels below the surface, through the layers of detritus build up over the centuries to the deep rock that underlay it all. “Stay with the main tunnel. It will bring you out under the Wall and well away.” He paused and added, “It leads under the King City. That was the road that Camar took when he left Kushat. He might have come back that way unseen… Of course the men who use these ways go chiefly to meet with outland traders and dispose of items that cannot well be sold in Kushat. Trade moves briskly in summer, at the time of the caravans.” Again he paused. “Poor Camar. The sin of pride. But perhaps after all he has done the city a great service.”
“We’ll know soon,” said Stark, feeling the weight of the belt around his waist. “Doubtless sooner than we wish.” And he stored all the information Balin had given him very carefully in his mind, knowing that by it he might live or die.
They went after that to a succession of poor tavern rooms, thick with smoke and the smell of people and old used leather garments. They sat for a little while in each one, drinking a cup of the sour wine that came by caravan from places with a kinder climate, and in each one lean dark-faced men took note of Stark but did not speak. When they walked home the nearer moon was close upon the Wall and the black figures of the sentries moved hugely against it.
Thanis lay at one end of the bench bed, sleeping. They lay down quietly and did not disturb her.
The night wore on.
Very late, when the farther moon was sloping to the west, Thanis woke and knew that she was not going to sleep again. The room was very quiet except for the deep breathing of the men. The sentries on the wall had ceased their pacing. Thanis lay in the dark quiet until she could not stand it any longer and then she rose and went to the window and opened the heavy curtains. Wind and moonlight swept together into the room. She stood with a fur robe wrapped around her, leaning on the sill and looking out at the slumbering city.
Stark stirred uneasily, turning one way and then another. His motions grew violent. Thanis turned, and then crossed the room and touched him.
Instantly he was awake.
“You were dreaming,” she said softly.
Stark shook his head. His eyes were still clouded, though not with sleep. “Blood,” he said, “heavy in the wind.”
Thanis whispered, “I smell nothing but the dawn.”
Stark got up. “Wake Balin. I’m going up on the Wall.”
He caught his cloak from the peg and flung open the door, standing on the narrow steps outside. The moonlight caught in his eyes, pale as frostfire. Thanis turned from him, suddenly trembling.
“Balin,” she said. “Balin…”
He was already awake. Together they followed Stark up the rough-cut stair that led to the top of the Wall.
Stark looked southward, where the plain ran down from the mountains and spread away below Kushat. Nothing moved out there. Nothing marred the empty whiteness.
Stark said, “They will attack at dawn.”
VIII
They waited.
Some distance away in either direction a guard was huddled down over a small brazier, each one making a sort of tent out of his cloak to hoard the heat. They glanced incuriously at the three civilians, apparently content merely to survive these last hours of the night, when a man’s will and courage ran out of him like water from a cracked vessel. The wind came whistling down through the Gates of Death, and below in the empty streets the watchfires shuddered and flared.
They waited, and still there was nothing.
Balin said at last, “How can you know they’re coming?”
Stark shivered, a shallow rippling of the flesh that had nothing to do with cold, and every muscle of his body came alive. The farther moon plunged downward. The moonlight dimmed and changed, and the plain was very empty, very still.
“They will wait for darkness,” Stark said. “They will have an hour or so, between moonset and the rising of the sun.”
He turned his head, drawn inevitably to look toward the cliffs above Kushat. Here, close under them, they seemed to tower outward in a curving mass, like the last wave of eternity rolling down, crested white with the ash of shattered worlds.
He looked into the black and narrow mouth of the Gates of Death, and the primitive ape-thing within him cringed and moaned, oppressed by a sense of fate. By this means and that he had been led across half a world to stand here with the talisman of a long-dead king in his hands. If things went as he supposed they would, he would soon be following the footsteps of that long-dead king into whatever strangeness might lie beyond that doorway—a strangeness, perhaps, that spoke with little spidery voices…
He shook with the memory of those voices and fought down a strong desire to take off the belt and drop it outside the Wall. He reminded himself of how he had ridden toward Kushat, looking up at the pass and lusting after the power that he might find there, power to destroy Ciaran of Mekh, and he laughed, not with any very great humor, at his own inconsistency.
He said to Balin, “Camar told me that Ban Cruach was supposed to have gone back through the Gates of Death at the end. Is that true?”
Balin shrugged. “That is the legend. At least, he is not buried in Kushat.” It occurred to him to be surprised. “Why do you ask that?”
“I don’t know,” Stark said, and turned back to his contemplation of the plain. Diemos touched the horizon. A last gleam of reddish light tinged the snow and then was gone.
Thanis pressed closer to Balin for warmth, looking uneasily at Stark. There was a sort of timeless patience about him. Balin was aware of it, too, and envied him. He would have liked to go back down where there were warmth and comfort to help the waiting, but he was ashamed to. He was cold and doubtful, but he stayed.
Time passed, endless minutes of it. The sentries drowsed over their braziers. The plain was in utter darkness under the faint, far northern stars.
Stark said, “Can you hear them?”
“No.”
“They come.”
His hearing, far keener than Balin’s, picked up the little sounds, the vast inchoate rustling of an army on the move in stealth and darkness. Light-armed men, hunters, used to stalking wild beasts in the snow. They could move softly. But still they made a breathing and a stirring, a whispering that was not of the wind.
“I hear nothing,” Balin said. And Thanis shook her head, her face showing pale from the folds of Balin’s cloak.
Again they waited. The westering stars moved toward the horizon, and at length in the east a dim pallor crept across the sky. The plain was still shrouded in night, but now Stark could make out the high towers of the King City, ghostly and indistinct. And he wondered who would be king in Kushat by the time this unrisen sun had set.